Our Story
Maribeth Vander Weele founded the Vander Weele Group in 2003 after spending years in and around public education.  As an education reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, she listened to many stories about obstacles to achievement. She documented those obstacles — ranging from classrooms without teachers and buildings in disrepair to lack of sequenced curricula — in an acclaimed book on Chicago Public Schools. Many of her reform strategies were adopted in 1995 when Maribeth joined the school system’s turnaround team. Although later, as Inspector General, she assumed responsibility for oversight and enforcement, she understood that systemic challenges and day-to-day demands on school leaders left little time for planning and compliance. When she launched the Vander Weele Group, her goal was not to serve as an armchair critic, but as a partner in support of leaders.  Today, the firm’s monitoring programs and related services are infused with that vision of providing oversight and support.

Why the Vander Weele Group

We Know the Subject

We've analyzed hundreds of pages of legislation and regulatory guidance to identify standards. We keep tabs on the ever-evolving federal standards.
We've Done This Before

We monitor sites throughout the country, so we know the challenges and solutions to creating a monitoring program. We understand the logistics involved.
We're Independent

As independent observers with practical knowledge, we are incentivized to provide you objective and meaningful information.
We're Wholistic 

We don't stop with identifying non-compliance. Drawing on a broad array of expertise and hundreds of resources, we provide grant recipients with technical assistance to become compliant.

What We've Done

Here are just a few projects we’ve completed.

  • Monitored federal grant monies in 23 states for compliance with the No Child Left Behind, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, federal OMB Omni Circular, and more. Read More
  • Monitored services for approximately 19,000 children with disabilities younger than age 3. Read More
  • Developed training on the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, School Board Roles and Responsibilities, Board Oversight, Ethics, Using School Data, Facilities, Roberts’ Rules of Order, Administrative Cost Grants, Emergency Planning, and more.
  • Developed more than 100 pages of training on conducting fiscal and educational reviews of schools.
  • Designed monitoring tools and related materials for fiscal, Special Education, and other reviews.
  • Developed policies and forms for security, substance abuse, suicide prevention, sexual harassment, search and seizure, drug and  alcohol testing, anti-bullying, zero tolerance for weapons, and more.
  • Organized a Safe Schools Symposium, featuring 29 speakers and drawing 288 attendees.
  • Developed programs to address alcohol abuse and suicides among Native American youth. They included student-developed videos addressing this important topic.
  • Developed Substance Abuse Prevention: Best Practices Resource Guide for Educators and a 112-page manual on Safe Schools Planning. We developed a Parents’ Guide to Mental Health, Student Health Guidelines, sample Memoranda of Understanding, Student Codes of Conduct, job descriptions, and nearly 20 forms ranging from Lost or Stolen Equipment Reports to School Entrance Health Forms.
  • Conducted investigations and data analytics into fraud, waste, and abuse in educational systems and other organizations.
  • Designed and implemented 20 site visits to Bureau of Indian Education schools to gather ground-level information concerning safety/security and incident-reporting practices and issues. VWG designed protocols that included hundreds of questions – including those related to internal controls and information technology security - to ensure that the most accurate portrait of these issues possible would emerge. This was part of a larger project that included analysis of 230,000 school safety and misconduct reports, training, and other services. Our tools include custom-built databases.
  • Analyzed payroll records for approximately 50,000 school employees and identified dozens of employees being paid for more than 250 hours a week, hundreds of active employees living across the country from their assigned work locations, two dozen employees with paychecks but no addresses, and much more.
  • Analyzed $40 million in credit card expenditures and identified 145 suspect users. Because of the new scrutiny, our client saved $5 million to $7 million a year.
  • Assisted Chicago Public Schools in developing Safe Schools planning guides and provided a detailed security assessment of one of the system’s largest high schools.
  • Served as the outsourced Inspector General of the Public Building Commission of Chicago.
  • Evaluated business processes and performance in multi-billion-dollar organizations in the government and corporate sectors. Its founder and/or team has reviewed and recommended improvements in more than 20 major functions, ranging from information technology and recruitment to financial management systems. Such analyses require mapping business processes to support execution of performance objectives.

For more information, visit www.vanderweelegroup.com